Advertisers and marketers looking for a way to survey consumers or run branded campaigns in developing countries are limited in their abilities to reach these audiences.

Txteagle seeks to change that and boasts a database of more than 2.1 billion prepaid mobile subscribers across 220 operators in 80 countries. It can use the mobile phone to serve as conduit between advertiser and consumer.

The startup uses airtime compensation to sugarcoat its survey and campaign solicitation attempts. Txteagle founder Nathan Eagle says this is because airtime is equivalent to — if not greater than — cash in these countries. Ten percent of an individual's annual income in emerging markets is spent on purchasing prepaid airtime, Eagle says.

Eagle learned about the research incentive accidentally in 2006 when he was a research faculty member at MIT, and moved to East Africa to teach students at the University of Nairobi how to program applications. While working in the district hospital of Kilifi, he soon found a disconnect between Kenya's centralized blood bank and rural hospitals that often led to blood shortages.

In 2007, his University of Nairobi students developed a simple SMS application that gave nurses at rural hospitals the ability to text updates of blood supply levels. The system also supplied blood bank officials with a real-time visualization on the status of supplies. The system solved the shortage challenge, for about a week.

In a month's time, nurses had stopped texting updates altogether. Why? Eagle had overlooked an important cog in the larger machine: The price of a text message. "Asking nurses to send text messages everyday was essentially asking them to take a pay cut," he says.

"So we modified the software," he explains. "Upon receiving an SMS message with the day’s blood supplies, the system would automatically transfer a small amount of airtime back to the nurse who sent the message. A switch flipped; the nurses began enthusiastically sending daily updates."

Eagle's existing telecommunications research projects at MIT had netted him relationships with operators that he was able to parlay into this airtime compensation system for the Kenyan blood bank SMS project.

As it turns out, the airtime compensation model he uncovered has far-greater implications for market research and advertising in emerging markets. In 2009, Eagle founded txteagle to explore these opportunities.

Today, txteagle has Nokia and the United Nations in its client Rolodex. The United Nations conducts an annual disaster-preparedness survey and used txteagle for its most recent survey to recruit, survey and compensate respondents in 50 counties.

Txteagle has received more than 250 unsolicited requests for proposals, because it can provide a service that no one else can, Eagle says. It's a demand that far exceeds its current capabilities.

Txteagle plans to use a recently closed $8.5 million funding round to expand its team from six to 20 by year's end. Its next steps include working to create replete profiles on its 2.1 billion respondent pool so it can help advertisers send targeted advertising messages under the same airtime compensation model.

"Advertising in developing worlds is a $120-billion-a-year business," Eagle says, who believes his company is best positioned to provide targeted advertising to these audiences.

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